177-10002-10016) | | 2025 RELEASE UNDER THE PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATION RECORDS ACT OF 1992 |
. JFK Assassination System Date: 8/26/20)
Identification Form

Agency Information

AGENCY:  LBJ
RECORD NUMBER:  177-10002-10016
RECORD SERIES: NSF, UNARRANGED FILES, LA/CUBAN SUBVERSION, BOX 5
AGENCY FILE NUMBER :
Document Information
ORIGINATOR: CIA
FROM:
TO:
TITLE:
DATE: — 02/18/1963
PAGES: °§
SUBJECTS :
NEED SUBJECT ASSIGNED
DOCUMENT TYPE: DRAFT BRIEFING NOTES
CLASSIFICATION: — Unclassified
RESTRICTIONS: 1A
CURRENT STATUS: — Redact
DATE OF LASTREVIEW: 04/21/1998
OPENING CRITERIA :
COMMENTS :

v9.t

HY 450955 Dacld: 3272705165

Page 1


SECRET

DRAFT BRIEFING NOTES 18 February 1963

FUNDING

I. Cuban financing of subversive operations in Latin

America is easy to ascertain and hard to document.

Our evidence shows that it is generally effected

by couriers carrying cash.

A.

A Venezuelan politician, Fabricio Ojeda, re-
turned from Cuba in March of 1962, and was seen
by several witnesses to have large quantities
of US currency stuffed in a false-bottomed com-
partment of his suitcase: There is no law
against bringing currency into Venezuela, so
that authorities could not even determine how
much he had brought in. Ojeda later was cap-
tured, tried, and sentenced for guerrilla ac-
tivity.

A Nicaraguan exile, Julio Cesar Mayorga Porto-
carrera, was flying from Mexico to Honduras in
September, 1961, when weather forced the plane
to overfly Honduras and land in Nicaragua. He
was found to be carrying $3,600 in cash from
Cuba for Nicaraguan rebels in Honduras.

Last March Ecuadorean troops raided a guerrilla

training camp in the mountains west of Quito and

SECRET

HY 50955 Docld:322705165 Page 2

SECRET

arrested some 48 members of the URJE (Union of
Revolutionary Ecuadorean Youth): The leaders ‘of
the group admitted having received guerrilla
training in Cuba, but there was no other evidence
at the time of any Cuban involvement. The URJE,
however, was a Communist-front group whose leaders
had thrown off the discipline of the regular Conm-
munist. party, and this January the Communists man-
aged to have a URJE convention, run by Young Com-
munists, expel the leaders. They were accused,
according to published accounts, of having wasted
$44,000 supplied by Cuba for guerrilla activities.
One of our reliable sources in the Communist Party
((a regional Communist leader in contact with the
Cuban chargé in Chile, and a member of the PCE
inquiry commission)) has informed us that the
next-to-last Cuban chargé in Quito blamed the
fiasco on the fact that his successor had passed
the money to the URJE without coordinating with
the regular Communist party.

D. A highly placed Guatemalan Communist who defected
last November has given us a specific account of
procedures by which Cuba sent cash to Mexico to
puy weapons which were then smuggled into Gua te-

mala.

-2~

SECRET

HY 50955 Docld:32205165 Page 3


SECRET

E. We also have considerable evidence of involved
bank transfers by which Cuban money eventually
reaches Latin American front groups to pay for
political and propaganda activity. In some
countries where the Cubans still have diplomatic
missions, we have obtained photostats showing
that Cuban diplomats paid for printing of front-
group propaganda.

F. Just last month, one of the first Brazilians to
receive guerrilla warfare training in 1961 was
Picked up with a Suitcase full of ammunition he
was carrying to some of those same guerrilla
training camps exposed when the Varig plane
crashed in Peru. Interestingly enough, the
Brazilians believe that the money Cuba had been
providing for the camps actually came from Com-
munist China. Since the exposure of the Varig
documents-~and probably since the guerrillas
first reached the Cuban embassy in Rio with
their complaints about mismanagement, confusion,
and corruption--the Cubans have apparently
stopped financing this operation, but the evidence
shows it is still limping along. The man with’
the suitcase full of ammunition said that a woman
attorney in Rio had given him the money to buy a
large hacienda as a new guerrilla camp. We know

~3-
SECRET

HW 50955 Docld:322705165 Page 4


HY 50955

SECRET

that this woman is a cut-out in the communica-
tions between the pro-Communist Peasant Leagues,
which have run the camps, and the Cuban embassy.
it. The principle that guerrillas must be self-sustain-
ing has obviously been applied to finances as well.

Communists have staged waves of bank robberies in

Venezuela, Peru, and Argentina,

A. The most spectacular hold-up was that of a bank
in a Lima suburb last year which netted almost
$100,000. Some of the participants have been
caught and are being tried in the mass trials
of more than 200 Communists just starting in
Peru. We know that the hold-up was carried out
by a combination of guerrillas and ordinary
criminals, who divided the loot fifty-fifty.
Some of the share of the common criminals has
been recovered, but the Communist half is be-
lieved to have reached the sizeable guerrilla
forces of Hugo Blanco in the Cuzco Valley.

B. Just last week a bank in an outlying Venezuelan
‘town was robbed of $25,000 by men wearing FALN
armbands.

Cc. Argentine police last July raided a Buenos Aires
warehouse and found evidence that it had been
the headquarters for a gang of terrorists—-ap-
parently working with both the Peronists and the

-4—
SECRET

Docld:32205165 Page 5


a SECRET

Communists--responsible for a wave of hold-ups,
burglaries, and attacks on police posts designed

_ to obtain funds, weapons, and explosives,

~5—

SECRET

HY 50955 Docld:32205165 Page 6


